Hello all!
I’ve got a guest review today for Rebecca Mascull’s The Visitors, from my mum! 🙂 She read and really enjoyed it so I asked her to write a quick review for it so I can share it with you all.
[Synopsis]

Imagine if you couldn’t see
couldn’t hear
couldn’t speak…
Then one day somebody took your hand and opened up the world to you.
Adeliza Golding is a deafblind girl, born in late Victorian England on her father’s hop farm. Unable to interact with her loving family, she exists in a world of darkness and confusion; her only communication is with the ghosts she speaks to in her head, who she has christened the Visitors. One day she runs out into the fields and a young hop-picker, Lottie, grabs her hand and starts drawing shapes in it. Finally Liza can communicate.
Her friendship with her teacher and with Lottie’s beloved brother Caleb leads her from the hop gardens and oyster beds of Kent to the dusty veldt of South Africa and the Boer War, and ultimately to the truth about the Visitors.
Rebecca Mascull’s first novel is the tale of a wonderful friendship, but it is also a thrilling adventure, a heartbreaking love story and a compelling ghost story.

[Review]
Set on a hop farm at the end of the 19th Century, a deaf-blind girl narrates the story and through her we experience how she starts to make sense of the World around her and to communicate, thanks mainly to the intervention of one of the summer hop-pickers.
We never know more than Liza, the narrator, does and we see, feel and hear her developing into a warm, intelligent and brave woman.
It is beautifully written with not a word out of character or time and the story takes us from Kent to the Boer War and through tragedy, friendship and love. It is also a strangely compelling ghost story that will linger on after the story is finished.
[Rating: 4/5]